Psychometric properties of the Korean version of the Palliative Care Nursing Self-Competence scale for infant use.

Background: Despite the significant advances in neonatal treatment and care over the past 30 years, palliative care in the neonatal intensive care unit has not been fully provided in South Korea. Neonatal nurses are essential professionals in palliative care as they are directly involved in the care, but there is little information on their palliative care competency because no assessment instrument is available in Korea.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to develop and test the validity and reliability of the Korean version of the Palliative Care Nursing Self-Competence scale for neonatal palliative care.

Methods: This scale for infant care was developed through parallel translation techniques and revised based on cognitive interviews. Survey data were then collected from 220 neonatal nurses who worked in 13 neonatal intensive care units in Korea. Internal consistency reliability, construct validity based on exploratory factor analysis, and criterion-related validity were tested.

Results: The final version of the scale included 40 items in five domains that explained 53.4% of the variance. Criterion-related validity was confirmed based on a positive correlation with the Korean version of the attitudes towards neonatal palliative care measurement tool. The Cronbach's alpha for the scale was 0.95.

Conclusions: The Korean version of the Palliative Care Nursing Self-Competence scale for infant care has satisfactory construct validity and reliability to measure palliative care self-competence of neonatal nurses in Korea and evaluate an education program in future studies.